{
 "id": "walt-whitman/an-old-mans-thought-of-school",
 "title": "An Old Man’s Thought of School",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Walt Whitman",
 "poet_slug": "walt-whitman",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Leaves of Grass",
 "book_slug": "leaves-of-grass",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 223,
 "container": "Autumn Rivulets",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1876,
  "venue": "Two Rivulets (Camden, 1876)",
  "note": "Located in this edition by matching this text's lines against the 1876 Two Rivulets scan. The corpus text follows the 1891–92 arrangement, by which the poem had been revised. First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/tworivuletsinclu00whitrich"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass",
  "file": "autumn-rivulets.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1322",
   "https://archive.org/details/leavesgrass03whitgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12",
  "corrections": [
   {
    "line": 1,
    "field": "indent",
    "was": 0,
    "now": 3,
    "why": "Indentation absent from the source markup and measured from the scan: this line starts 8.7 character advances (~4.3 em) right of its own page's base margin, where the verse sets flush. Converted at 3.0 advances per indent level (tools/defects.py indent).",
    "checked_against": "https://archive.org/details/leavesgrass03whitgoog",
    "date": "2026-08-20"
   }
  ]
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 19,
  "n_stanzas": 6,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 132,
  "max_indent": 3
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "An old man’s thought of school,",
    "indent": 3
   },
   {
    "text": "An old man gathering youthful memories and blooms that youth itself cannot.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Now only do I know you,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O fair auroral skies⁠—O morning dew upon the grass!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And these I see, these sparkling eyes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "These stores of mystic meaning, these young lives,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Building, equipping like a fleet of ships, immortal ships,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Soon to sail out over the measureless seas,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On the soul’s voyage.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Only a lot of boys and girls?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only the tiresome spelling, writing, ciphering classes?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only a public school?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Ah more, infinitely more;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(As George Fox rais’d his warning cry, “Is it this pile of brick and mortar, these dead floors, windows, rails, you call the church?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Why this is not the church at all⁠—the church is living, ever living souls.”)",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And you America,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Cast you the real reckoning for your present?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The lights and shadows of your future, good or evil?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To girlhood, boyhood look, the teacher and the school.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}